Israel and the Church

"For I do not desire, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery... that blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And so all Israel will be saved... Concerning the gospel they are enemies for your sake, but concerning the election they are beloved for the sake of the fathers. For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable." (Rom 11:25-29)

On September 2, 2009, Catholic apologist Robert Sungenis published a document entitled "The Erroneous Teachings of Catholics for Israel” in which he directly attacks the legitimacy of our apostolate. This document states that on the Catholics for Israel website “various and sundry claims about the Jews and Israel are being disseminated as Catholic Teaching” but these, according to Sungenis, are “not Catholic teachings.” The following is our response to Sungenis' attacks.

Sometimes I hear Catholics talking about making a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and I must confess that something lightly irritates me about this. “Why would this irritate you” you might ask. “What’s wrong with Catholics visiting the land of Jesus and cradle of their faith?” Nothing is wrong with Catholics visiting the land of Jesus of course. It is with the terminology that I have a bone to pick.

Jesus Christ suffers in the passion of Israel. In striking Israel, the anti-Semites strike him, insult him and spit on him. To persecute the house of Israel is to persecute Christ, not in his mystical body as when the Church is persecuted, but in his fleshly lineage and in his forgetful people whom he ceaselessly loves and calls. In the passion of Israel, Christ suffers and acts as the shepherd of Zion and the Messiah of Israel, in order gradually to conform his people to him.

"We know that God gave Israel the land but there is no mention of his taking it back again forever. Can we Christians exclude that what is happening in our day, that is, the return of Israel to the land of its fathers, is not connected in some way, still a mystery to us, to this providential order which concerns the chosen people and which is carried out even through human error and excess as happens in the Church itself?"

Cardinal Avery Dulles (1918-2008), of blessed memory, discusses the present status of God's covenant with Israel, a subject which has been extensively discussed in Jewish-Christian dialogues since the Shoah. Catholics look for an approach that fits in the framework of Catholic doctrine, much of which has been summarized by the Second Vatican Council...

Christoph Cardinal Schönborn says European Christians' support for Israel is not based on Holocaust guilt and Christians should affirm Zionism as biblical. Schoenborn said it was doctrinally important for Christians to recognize Jews' connection to the "Holy Land" and Christians should rejoice in Jews' return to Palestine as a fulfillment of biblical prophecy.

In this message I try to outline a a Jewish Catholic doctrine of Mary, a doctrine that, I think, does full justice to Mary as she is understood by the Church while, at the same time, acknowledging the dignity of Israel as it is understood in Judaism.

Catholics for Israel is an apostolate faithful to the Magisterium, the living teaching office of the Church to whom Jesus has entrusted the task of authentically interpreting the word of God (DV 10). This means that official magisterial teachings of the Catholic Church, most especially chapter 4 of the declaration Nostra Aetate and the Catechism of the Catholic Church, form the core of our beliefs concerning Israel and the Jewish people.